A House Torn in Half Stands for Storm's Toll

By

Jennifer Weiss

Updated Nov. 19, 2012 11:00 p.m. ET

UNION BEACH, N.J.—The yellow house on Front Street has presided over the Raritan Bay for more than 150 years, with a regal bearing that earned it the name Princess Cottage. These days, however, the brick building doesn't turn heads for its beauty.

The house is almost half gone, with one side sheared along a jagged edge and reduced to rubble by the ravages of the superstorm, which wrecked more than 200 homes in this blue-collar beach town.

A Symbol of Sandy's Toll

705 Front St. was completely destroyed by superstorm Sandy in Union Beach, N.J. Jason Andrew for The Wall Street Journal

From the Archives

The post-apocalyptic image of a divided house still standing has become a magnet for photographers, turning the home into a symbol of Sandy's destruction. The photo has appeared in untold news stories and is on the cover of the current issue of Newsweek.

The fame of his home rankles Jon Zois, a 34-year-old car salesman who had moved in with his girlfriend, Meridith Schwarzber, just six months ago.

"That was going to be our house to raise our family in, and what a beautiful place to live," he said.

The couple drove slowly through Union Beach the day after the storm, hoping for the best even as they passed neighbors "wandering the streets like zombies," as Mr. Zois recalled. They weren't prepared for the extent of the damage.

When Ms. Schwarzber reported that she could see straight through into the attic, her boyfriend didn't believe it until he took a closer look.

"You kind of want to wake up," said Ms. Schwarzber, 30.

With their dream house uninhabitable, the couple has moved into a rented one-bedroom apartment in Old Bridge, N.J. They take some solace from the way their famous ruin has helped bring wider attention to the plight of Union Beach, where many homeowners and merchants lost everything.

The property belongs jointly to Constantine Zois and Barbara Zois, the father and aunt of Jon Zois. They purchased it in 1994 for $117,900, according to property records.

At the time, the elder Mr. Zois recognized it as a remarkable deal.

"The lot itself is worth many times that without the house," he said. "It's a very fine piece of property. We lucked out. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get unlucky, and there you go."

Built in 1855, the house had withstood its share of storms and nor'easters over the decades, including the legendary 1938 hurricane that made landfall in the region at Category 3. Some locals claim it was a speak-easy during Prohibition and even a brothel at one time.

After surviving for so long, "the house, I thought, would not fall down," the father said. "I never thought in a million years that it would crumble like that."

And the elder Mr. Zois knows something about the impact of storms: He teaches meteorology at Kean University. Of the five homes he owns on the New Jersey coast, he said only two were likely to be saved.

Adam Mikucki, 33, grew up in the Princess Cottage and spent his childhood fishing in the nearby bay and communicating with his lifelong best friend across the street using flashlights and walkie-talkies. His parents undertook a six-year renovation of the home before financial troubles forced a short sale, he said.

The iconic photograph of the shattered home reached Mr. Mikucki in nearby Keyport, N.J.

"I dropped to my knees and just started crying when I saw the picture," Mr. Mikucki said. "I rode out so many storms in that house."

Last week, the Zois family returned to Union Beach with two architects and a contractor to determine if any parts of the structure might be salvaged.

Jon Zois picked some of his girlfriend's clothes out of the rubble and retrieved a box of keepsakes: a gold chain from his grandfather; a ticket to a World Series game; photos of his sister, Jennifer, who died three years ago at age 33.

The architects were optimistic about a rebuilt house that incorporated safety measures suggested by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "In the long run," said Frederick Cooke, a partner at Newark-based C+C Architecture, "it will stand through the next storm."

Ms. Zois was amazed to find a second-floor bedroom still intact and practically untouched. She climbed inside through the wide-open rear of the house, passed a smashed piano and walked upstairs to grab what she could, including a jewelry box, some bedding and two antique statuettes.

The bed remained perfectly made, she said, and everything was just as she had left it.

"I consider her the Tara of Union Beach," said Ms. Zois, a reference to the plantation in "Gone With the Wind." "Like Scarlett O'Hara. That's how she was. She stood there in the rubble, 'As God as my witness…' "

"She's going to come back," Ms. Zois said of the shattered house.

Reality may make a real-estate revival tricky, however, since the home didn't have flood insurance.

The elder Mr. Zois, as a meteorologist, can't help but find fascinating the storm that ravaged his properties. He mused that his childhood ties to Union Beach, long before he bought the now-ruined home, established his initial interested in studying the weather.

"Despite the losses, I really take it philosophically because I'm still in tune with the meteorology," he said. "Even though it came back to bite me, you might say, but that's the way it goes. You pick yourself up and you go on."

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